Low-cost disposable packaging containers have been designed and produced for commercial foodstuffs, such as various bakery goods, for the last several decades. Frequently these containers take the form of circular or rectangular containers constructed of thin-walled aluminum sheeting having wall thicknesses on the order of 0.004 to 0.010 inches, which means that the sheeting material itself is flexible. Usually these containers are drawn from flat sheeting to form upstanding side walls from a bottom wall along with shoulders to receive a cover panel.
The flexibility in the sheeting material results mainly from a desire to construct the container of a low-cost disposable material. To increase the structural integrity of the container manufactured from this material, the container drawing tool or die is designed to form a plurality of ribs in the container side walls and also to form a shoulder surrounding the upper edge of the side wall.
In some cases the side walls are formed with a vertical lip which is subsequently crimped over a cover panel.
One problem found in these thin-walled disposable containers is that it is difficult to remove certain types of foodstuffs, such as bakery goods, that are conventionally baked within the container itself. In cases where the container is pre-filled with bakery goods engaging both the bottom and the side walls, such as pound cakes or coffee cakes, it is difficult to remove the cake from the container as a whole or to remove one or more initial slices from one end of the container in the case of rectangular containers or the first slice in the case of a circular type container.
There have been attempts to facilitate the removal of bakery goods from reusable containers. However, insofar as Applicant is aware, there has been no application of these techniques nor any other techniques to solve the removal problem in the disposable container field for commercially produced bakery goods.
Several United States patents disclose reusable homemaker-type containers designed to facilitate the removal of bakery goods from baking containers. One such container shown in the Corse U.S. Pat. No. 4,113,225 shows a rectangular baking pan that has a removable side wall that permits insertion of a spatula under the baked goods and allows access to the bottom of the baked goods so that the product may be separated from the pan for ease in removing the product, and more particularly to permit a spatula to separate the baked goods product from the bottom of the pan. There are two deficiencies in the Corse baking pan: firstly, Corse has only a portion of the end panel removable so that a lip actually interferes with spatula insertion, and secondly, the removable section does not have wraparound corners and does not fit on the outside of his main section to facilitate removal of the smaller end section to minimize product damage.
There are several other patents that show removable wall sections on a baking pan such as the Peacock U.S. Pat. No. 493,835 and the Sinclair U.S. Pat. No. 1,497,033 but these are primarly designed to facilitate removal of the entire product from the container rather than to provide easier slicing of the product while the remaining portion remains in the container. In these containers only a flat end wall is removable essentially from inside a main baking pan.
Also U.S. Pat. Nos. the Grant 701,198; the Wells 1,223,226; the Kratz 1,714,379; and the Paek U.S. Pat. No. 4,266,668 show other baking containers having removable side wall portions.
It is a primary object of the present invention to provide a disposable low-cost container for commercial bakery goods that is easily opened to provide access to the enclosed bakery goods.